I think it's time for blizzard to address this issue. Even with empowerment rifts, it's still takes a very long time and it becomes a chore. Maybe we can get 5 chances instead of 4 to speed things up? How do you guys feel about the current leveling system for gems and how would you change it? Thanks.
What about varying the number of levels you can get based on the difference between the level of the gem and the level of the GR? For example, if I start with a clean gem and run a level 50 GR, i can get 10-15 levels on the gem. that way, veteran characters can level gems for themselves/alts easily while new players go through the process as normal.
What about varying the number of levels you can get based on the difference between the level of the gem and the level of the GR? For example, if I start with a clean gem and run a level 50 GR, i can get 10-15 levels on the gem. that way, veteran characters can level gems for themselves/alts easily while new players go through the process as normal.
I like that idea actually. Keep everything the same but change the chances. Currently the GR has to be 10 levels above what the gem currently is in order to get a 100% upgrade. So every five GR levels past those initial 10 grants you an additional upgrade chance (essentially 100% until you go below the 10 level gap). So If you start with a level 10 gem and do GR 50, instead of 3 chances you would get an additional 8 chances to level for a total of 11. It also wouldn't affect higher end progression because you're always below that 10 level gap anyways when you are doing gem levels to try and push your rank. Really really like this idea!
Leveling gems for augmenting should be seen along the same lines as paragon leveling. It's not something mandatory, but part of the powercreep in end-game, and it's supposed to give the monster slaying a purpose. Remember why paragon was introduced: people didn't have anything to do after hitting level 70, other than searching for (really improbable) incremental upgrades. Paragon was born, and with it additional progress; initially capped at 100 in D3V, and now infinite and ever more so powerful. While many players (especially those that are high paragon level and actually do experience this incredible power boost) argue that it is too much power, overshadowing gear and skill, Blizzard is reportedly fine with it (recent interview with Wyatt at Blizzcon) and it's unlikely to see a change to paragon in the near future.
Augmenting was introduced to address several things:
It diminishes the impact of paragon. A rank 100 augmentation makes up for 100 paragon level, so the difference between a fully augmented character and one without any augments is 1300 paragon ranks. More importantly, by further artificially inflating main stat on gear to levels of 25000 for some of the top players, the effect of additional paragon levels is devalued.
It creates an additional incentive to kill more and more rifts every season, even after you've leveled your main gems. In previous seasons you had very little purpose for Urshi's service once your main gems hit a certain level.
It de-incentivizes no-boss runs or 1% runs. The top groups are clearing up to 111, so you'd expect the gem levels to be at 120 or higher as in previous seasons (10-12 above the highest clear). However, if you inspect those players their gems are usually at around the same level of their clear; I just checked a couple of players right now and see Stricken/Trapped between 113 and 104.
It provides a gold sink, and the way Blizzard implemented this is nothing else but brilliant, in my opinion. Try to design something that allows players to spend billions and billions of gold quickly, without making casual players feel excluded or being ripped off...
You should treat augments as something optional, unless you want to get ranked really high on the leaderboards. And in case that's your goal, you need to invest time anyways in farming perfect gear and a lot of paragon levels anyways, and by doing those activities you'll get your augment gems "along the way". In the end, if you figure that you have 3-5 less gems as some other people it's the same as 250-400 paragon levels less than other people: you can't really blame Blizzard or the system, it's just that your competitors invested more and are reaping more rewards.
TL;DR: Augments are where they're supposed to be and don't need fixing. If you want a "fix" we need to talk about how much benefit players with unlimited time should get over occasional players, and if "skill" and "luck" should entirely make up for a very large chunk of time investment.
I think they should just let you equip the gems you want and gain exp the sameway as you would gain para exp... and just make the exp level numbers higher so you don't end up with out of control gem levels
I do not see how high ranked gems or augmentation can be considered as optional to anyone who wants to play the game for longer than a few months. What is considered high on the leaderboards? It takes solid gem ranks and okay augmentation just to reach the bottom of the leaderboards in nonseason. To say leaderboard is just extra activity to what the game is about seems a misrepresentation of the goal of the game. The goal of the game is not just getting past level 70, but to push the highest GR possible in solo and group play possible. Claiming that campaign mode, neph rifting speeds, or bounties, or anything but GR pushing is the end goal of the game is not true even if the devs have tried to paint such a picture at anytime since GRs were initiated. Once Grs were put into the game, the game became Grs and the chase to push them. That's it. Nothing else matters.
That opinion being said every activity in the game needs to be streamlined in an enjoyable way to facilitate Gr play. Campaign is a nice one time visit, but has nothing to do with Grs. It should not be tied to pushing. Bounties take too long and often involve players who can mess up the entire process thru bad play. Bounties need to be sped up. Neph rifting is a necessary activity to find gear, but the number of Gr keys currently dropped is too low because it delays a player from getting into Grs. Seasons are okay because it tightens the window of time to race to the top and starts all players at the same level. Seasons are more incentive to create effect groups than nonseaon. Not having a ton of accumulated resources motivates players to look for help in the form of other players, whereas in nonseason a well resourced player can ignore others and solo quite well until better gem levels are required.
Anything that wastes a player's time from being in Greater Rifts is an issue that needs to be addressed and streamlined. With augmentation being added to the game it is not a luxury, but a new necessity to play the game effectively. This means prolonged gem ranking cannot be called a good use of a player's precious time if it over taxes that limited play time. As gem leveling stands it does delay players and prevents them from spending time in Grs where the meat of the game really is. Solutions may include:
A. More chances
B. Being allowed to buy chances instead of a fixed number
C. Chances being increased based on the difference of the gem starting rank and the level of the Gr completed- as above posts have advocated
D. Alternative ways to level gems outside of GRs, such as gem based bounties that quick boost low ranked gems
E. Simply being able to automatically pay to rank a gem to level fifty in the up front gold equivalent of having to run all the low level Grs required to get a gem to fifty.
There are many solutions but the devs have to be willing to address what impedes players from playing the meat of the game and stop cock blocking all the time. The game is about Grs. All activity needs to get players efficiently to Grs. All the extraneous activity that prevents players from playing the meat of the game is just annoying and stubborness by the devs. It seems they have created a game and then want to keep players from playing it. Their attitudes about game issues is very passive-aggressive and smacks of resentment towards players who want to speed up the processes in order to focus on the goal of the game with the limited playtime a player has per week.
Gr levels and leaderboard should never be handed to players wanting to gain them, but denying that the current state of in game activities like legendary gem leveling creates unnecessary time delays is just wrong, mean spirited, and ignoring the truth.
I think a few things about this issue. None of them really good tbh.
First off, I do not understand the decision to have the gap in leveling chance and level you complete.?! Why. Logically the chance should diminish when you try to level ABOVE THE GRIFT YOU JUST COMPLETED not 9 levels BELOW.
The time invested in a gem level for augment becomes more and more daunting as our power creep allows us to push further up the grift ladder. To just level a gem from 0-70 in empowered grifts it requires MINIMUM of 18 grifts. Of course unless you are doing level 80 grifts at the end you will have some failures so then we are talking more like 24-25 Grifts. This requires approximately 16-20 rifts (guesstimating key drop chance off the top of my head) The gold cost I cannot include here tho it can be sizable as it would depend on where and when you decided to raise your grift level. The cost of the 3 *uber gem to cube the augment. This is just to level it to 70 for augment, keeping in mind that most ppl do push their augments further and further and with power creep arriving they will need to REDO their augments from zero through ... 85? 90? 100?
I saw some comments regarding gear augmenting. That this is considered an extra that is not required and is only for people who want to push ladders. I don't believe this is a fair assessment. Gem leveling and augmenting is now an integral part of how this game functions along with Paragons. And saying that gem augmenting nullifies Paragons is not really accurate. In order to fully augment a set of Ancient gear to even just 70 that is 13 gems. That comes along with a significant amount of exp which = paragon which = main stat and so on and so on.
It really starts to look like Blizzard making "busywork" for players. No quality of life in this type of system especially since it all gets thrown away once the power creep allows higher grifting / gem leveling.
I understand that time invested = payoff in all the ways. Acquiring and Perfecting gear stats (tho less of this since augmented gear has a HUGE time investment and people become less likely to swap out gear unless the item is SIGNIFICANTLY better) Acquiring Paragon (still has value as it equals one augment gem level that doesn't go away) However, I DO believe there is some point at which this system needs to grow along with the power creep. The empowered grift did start this process but it is NOT enough.
I don't claim to have the solution. But anyone who plays knows that the problems do exist.
I can throw out some ideas that are not necessarily thought through but i will toss them out here anyway.
Increase amount of chances you can level in a grift.
Create an achievement that would allow you to start your gem level at 35 (dumb and fraught with problems i know)
Ability to BUY your way up a gem to lvl 35.
Ability to salvage an augment and retain 50% of its value (if it was 70 it will be 35 when u salvage it)
Allow leveling chances to retain 100% up to the level grift you just completed. with a 25% decrease each level above it. (Completed a 70 grift. 75% chance to level gem to 71. 50% chance on 72 etc.) Or 50% each level above. so you can only possibly do one above.
I know these ideas are not fleshed out and don't take into account the big picture that Blizzard is "supposed" to take when making long term changes.
I think they should just let you equip the gems you want and gain exp the sameway as you would gain para exp... and just make the exp level numbers higher so you don't end up with out of control gem levels
Something like this would not happen.Blizz would make it so that the gem has to be equipped,which most people use non used gems as augments.Otherwise this would be perfect.As a solo player I will never get my gems higher than what my GR rank is,so if gems leveled by exp value it would make things easier.The exp for gems would have to be larger than what Para is now so it wouldnt get abused.
Here is what I propose, change the way that empowered GRifts work but still use them as a gold sink. You empower the rift and it lets you continue to upgrade the gem for a gold cost until you're done or out of gold. The gold cost will continue to increase as if you were empowering the GRift at the level of the gem. For example, you opt to empower a GRift 30 and you want to keep upgrading a lv 0 gem to that level.
You get the first 3 rolls for free like you normally do, but then lv 4 will cost 242,000g, then level 5 will cost 279,000g, etc. This goes on all the way until level 30 (7,400,000g per attempt) and failure rates stay the same. So if you hit 27 and fail, then you have to pay another 5,500,000g to roll again and hope you don't have to pay a third time. The gem will only upgrade to the level that you empowered.
I know that some people in the forum will say that this change would just encourage botting. Well, there isn't much in this game that discourages it, so adding this as a convenience won't hurt those who do play legitimately and want to power level. Without running 20+ Grifts to get a single gem up to par. I actually think it adds more value to items with gold find and BotH since people might actually farm for gold now to use it.
Keep in mind that any process that get's sped up brings the player closer to the point of not wanting to play. It's not that "blizzard doesn't want you to do it", it's "blizzard wants you to get a lot of replay out of a game you paid for". It's what their studio is all about. When you buy a blizzard game you know it's a game you're going to get a lot of hours out of. So just remember, any time you want the extra work taken out of something remember the complaints of people saying "Nobody is playing seasons. Two weeks in. All my friends are playing other games."
I still think the extra reward for the GR to gem level gap should be done though. You should not only be rewarded for time spent but be rewarded for capability. It applies to every player differently since not every player can farm the same GR level so you wind up with different results.
If people are complaining that there is no content to the game, then that is because the game is all about pushing Grs and that's pretty much it. Once a person has played thru campaign, neph rifts, and bounties a few hundred times that kind of content becomes old news and meaningless. All of that activity just points the player to one conclusion and that conclusion is that the game is all about pushing Grs. The game has no vision beyond that. If the game does it would be news to me.
Diablo 3 is Grs.
The only true solution to changing the breadth of the game is to make a new game that starts with a foundation with more compass than Gr pushing. I'm all for a new game, Diablo 4, but at the pace Blizzard creates new games it would be at the minimum 5 years out. The public waited for over a decade to go from D2 to D3.
If no new game is going to be released any time soon, then D3 itself has to be streamlined to make getting to GR content less annoying. Veteran players know what they want and making them jump thru hoops to get it is fine and dandy if it is actually FUN content. Problem is neph rifts are damn boring, bounties are damn boring, and veteran players not gaining more control over RNG is damn boring. If a veteran player could gain more control over the RNG then the build up tasks towards Gr pushing might be less annoying.
The game is supposed to be about fun. Hoops and busy work are not fun if a player never gains more advantage thru persistent play other than spending long amounts of time to get advantage. This is why botting becomes appealing to many. Players who put commitment should gain edges towards controlling RNG factors. Creating faster ways to raise gems is one way to reward dedicated players.
Why not make a new feature where you pick a gem you want to level. Instead of chance at a lvl, it gains exp just like paragon. Maybe even have a slider where you can dump every point of exp into it, half, or 10%. Maybe add breakpoints into the game where once you do something, or do it a certain amount of times, a particular gem gains 10 levels? Dunno.
Essentially, move the Legendary Gems to Kanai's Kube. Caldessan's Despair is moved to Urshi. When you get to Urshi, you can upgrade your gems (Which are now account wide), or you can upgrade an ancient piece for 5 primary stat (Based on class, Vit upgrades removed), with the same chance of success/failure as gems.
The Gem of Ease recipe is moved to Gem of Ease lvl 25, which allows for the character equiping it to ignore all lvl requirements on gear.
I also posted my idea here, but it addresses only the problems of stash space and having to level another gem all over again when your characters share the same gems on builds. Please take a look and share your thoughts.
Now regarding the topic. I have the feeling that, when blizzard thought of Caldessann's, they wanted to target the ultra hardcore end game grinders, who were only farming paragons and getting bored. If they made it easier, it would lose it's meaning, no ?
Augments don't FEEL like something to keep us occupied, they ARE to keep us occupied.
People were complaining they couldn't upgrade their main gems anymore (after doing them 1% upgrades), and there was no use to upgrade the others. So... they gave the others a use.
And they did so in a smart way: everyone gets stronger, in a linear way (people that play a lot get higher augments, but they also had more paragon and better gear, so they increase their power with the same %), more "casual" players will use lower level gems as their "end" augment without the real need to upgrade as many gems as often, while the "hardcore players" will go through multiple sets and augment their items multiple times. This way, the balance between casual and hardcore players remains the same (it is a grinding game, someone playing 1 hour per day should not be as powerful as someone playing 12+ hours per day), and everyone will have to put relatively the same effort to keep that balance.
Also, people do not leave the game because they have to upgrade gems again after augmenting an item, since playing the game means upgrading them anyway. However, making it easier/faster to upgrade them, even if only a few levels, will make leave some people sooner, since "there is nothing left to do". So, changing the process would hurt the player base, not increase it.
Lastly, if it would get changed, it would need to be tweaked every season, because of the powercreep. I see suggestions now to speedlevel to 50 since we run 70-80 solo, so still a lot to upgrade. Well, on PTR, people are running 90+, so the speedlevel would have to be set to 60. Now what if there is a build after the patch that makes us jump a lot higher (I don't think last seasons static charge monk or this seasons twister wizard were planned, looking at how they get nerfed/destroyed in the next patch), do we change the number again mid season? Else people will complain again they need 50+ upgrades... And a core game mechanic (which this would be) that changes every season, is just bad. Imagine if they suddenly say "because of high paragon and augments, every point of mainstat only increases your damage by 0.5% instead of 1%", and the next season 0.4% because we have more again...
Augmentation works fine right now. It takes long because it has to take long. It's supposed to take long. The only problem I see with it, is that for the low gem levels, you want to speedfarm it as fast as possible. So you waste precious grift keys for low empowered grifts in order to not waste lots of gold on low lvl gems.
I think a good fix for this is an indirect one: Remove grift keys. Wasting 10+ grift keys per gem on lowlvl grifts is the annoying part.
Couldn't agree more, and tbh i think that's the reason they take so long to lvl, i normally don't do less than 80 to still get some xp value out of the grift keys since i'm always low on them and it takes me an average of 8 to 10 min to clear it unlike 2 to 3 in 60-.
Removing the grift keys would be a very welcome change since i wouldn't mind doing those 60- to lvl gems
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I think it's time for blizzard to address this issue. Even with empowerment rifts, it's still takes a very long time and it becomes a chore. Maybe we can get 5 chances instead of 4 to speed things up? How do you guys feel about the current leveling system for gems and how would you change it? Thanks.
What about varying the number of levels you can get based on the difference between the level of the gem and the level of the GR? For example, if I start with a clean gem and run a level 50 GR, i can get 10-15 levels on the gem. that way, veteran characters can level gems for themselves/alts easily while new players go through the process as normal.
I like that idea actually. Keep everything the same but change the chances. Currently the GR has to be 10 levels above what the gem currently is in order to get a 100% upgrade. So every five GR levels past those initial 10 grants you an additional upgrade chance (essentially 100% until you go below the 10 level gap). So If you start with a level 10 gem and do GR 50, instead of 3 chances you would get an additional 8 chances to level for a total of 11. It also wouldn't affect higher end progression because you're always below that 10 level gap anyways when you are doing gem levels to try and push your rank. Really really like this idea!
My Twitch Channel
Leveling gems for augmenting should be seen along the same lines as paragon leveling. It's not something mandatory, but part of the powercreep in end-game, and it's supposed to give the monster slaying a purpose. Remember why paragon was introduced: people didn't have anything to do after hitting level 70, other than searching for (really improbable) incremental upgrades. Paragon was born, and with it additional progress; initially capped at 100 in D3V, and now infinite and ever more so powerful. While many players (especially those that are high paragon level and actually do experience this incredible power boost) argue that it is too much power, overshadowing gear and skill, Blizzard is reportedly fine with it (recent interview with Wyatt at Blizzcon) and it's unlikely to see a change to paragon in the near future.
Augmenting was introduced to address several things:
You should treat augments as something optional, unless you want to get ranked really high on the leaderboards. And in case that's your goal, you need to invest time anyways in farming perfect gear and a lot of paragon levels anyways, and by doing those activities you'll get your augment gems "along the way". In the end, if you figure that you have 3-5 less gems as some other people it's the same as 250-400 paragon levels less than other people: you can't really blame Blizzard or the system, it's just that your competitors invested more and are reaping more rewards.
TL;DR: Augments are where they're supposed to be and don't need fixing. If you want a "fix" we need to talk about how much benefit players with unlimited time should get over occasional players, and if "skill" and "luck" should entirely make up for a very large chunk of time investment.
I think they should just let you equip the gems you want and gain exp the sameway as you would gain para exp... and just make the exp level numbers higher so you don't end up with out of control gem levels
I do not see how high ranked gems or augmentation can be considered as optional to anyone who wants to play the game for longer than a few months. What is considered high on the leaderboards? It takes solid gem ranks and okay augmentation just to reach the bottom of the leaderboards in nonseason. To say leaderboard is just extra activity to what the game is about seems a misrepresentation of the goal of the game. The goal of the game is not just getting past level 70, but to push the highest GR possible in solo and group play possible. Claiming that campaign mode, neph rifting speeds, or bounties, or anything but GR pushing is the end goal of the game is not true even if the devs have tried to paint such a picture at anytime since GRs were initiated. Once Grs were put into the game, the game became Grs and the chase to push them. That's it. Nothing else matters.
That opinion being said every activity in the game needs to be streamlined in an enjoyable way to facilitate Gr play. Campaign is a nice one time visit, but has nothing to do with Grs. It should not be tied to pushing. Bounties take too long and often involve players who can mess up the entire process thru bad play. Bounties need to be sped up. Neph rifting is a necessary activity to find gear, but the number of Gr keys currently dropped is too low because it delays a player from getting into Grs. Seasons are okay because it tightens the window of time to race to the top and starts all players at the same level. Seasons are more incentive to create effect groups than nonseaon. Not having a ton of accumulated resources motivates players to look for help in the form of other players, whereas in nonseason a well resourced player can ignore others and solo quite well until better gem levels are required.
Anything that wastes a player's time from being in Greater Rifts is an issue that needs to be addressed and streamlined. With augmentation being added to the game it is not a luxury, but a new necessity to play the game effectively. This means prolonged gem ranking cannot be called a good use of a player's precious time if it over taxes that limited play time. As gem leveling stands it does delay players and prevents them from spending time in Grs where the meat of the game really is. Solutions may include:
A. More chances
B. Being allowed to buy chances instead of a fixed number
C. Chances being increased based on the difference of the gem starting rank and the level of the Gr completed- as above posts have advocated
D. Alternative ways to level gems outside of GRs, such as gem based bounties that quick boost low ranked gems
E. Simply being able to automatically pay to rank a gem to level fifty in the up front gold equivalent of having to run all the low level Grs required to get a gem to fifty.
There are many solutions but the devs have to be willing to address what impedes players from playing the meat of the game and stop cock blocking all the time. The game is about Grs. All activity needs to get players efficiently to Grs. All the extraneous activity that prevents players from playing the meat of the game is just annoying and stubborness by the devs. It seems they have created a game and then want to keep players from playing it. Their attitudes about game issues is very passive-aggressive and smacks of resentment towards players who want to speed up the processes in order to focus on the goal of the game with the limited playtime a player has per week.
Gr levels and leaderboard should never be handed to players wanting to gain them, but denying that the current state of in game activities like legendary gem leveling creates unnecessary time delays is just wrong, mean spirited, and ignoring the truth.
I think a few things about this issue. None of them really good tbh.
First off, I do not understand the decision to have the gap in leveling chance and level you complete.?! Why. Logically the chance should diminish when you try to level ABOVE THE GRIFT YOU JUST COMPLETED not 9 levels BELOW.
The time invested in a gem level for augment becomes more and more daunting as our power creep allows us to push further up the grift ladder. To just level a gem from 0-70 in empowered grifts it requires MINIMUM of 18 grifts. Of course unless you are doing level 80 grifts at the end you will have some failures so then we are talking more like 24-25 Grifts. This requires approximately 16-20 rifts (guesstimating key drop chance off the top of my head) The gold cost I cannot include here tho it can be sizable as it would depend on where and when you decided to raise your grift level. The cost of the 3 *uber gem to cube the augment. This is just to level it to 70 for augment, keeping in mind that most ppl do push their augments further and further and with power creep arriving they will need to REDO their augments from zero through ... 85? 90? 100?
I saw some comments regarding gear augmenting. That this is considered an extra that is not required and is only for people who want to push ladders. I don't believe this is a fair assessment. Gem leveling and augmenting is now an integral part of how this game functions along with Paragons. And saying that gem augmenting nullifies Paragons is not really accurate. In order to fully augment a set of Ancient gear to even just 70 that is 13 gems. That comes along with a significant amount of exp which = paragon which = main stat and so on and so on.
It really starts to look like Blizzard making "busywork" for players. No quality of life in this type of system especially since it all gets thrown away once the power creep allows higher grifting / gem leveling.
I understand that time invested = payoff in all the ways. Acquiring and Perfecting gear stats (tho less of this since augmented gear has a HUGE time investment and people become less likely to swap out gear unless the item is SIGNIFICANTLY better) Acquiring Paragon (still has value as it equals one augment gem level that doesn't go away) However, I DO believe there is some point at which this system needs to grow along with the power creep. The empowered grift did start this process but it is NOT enough.
I don't claim to have the solution. But anyone who plays knows that the problems do exist.
I can throw out some ideas that are not necessarily thought through but i will toss them out here anyway.
Increase amount of chances you can level in a grift.
Create an achievement that would allow you to start your gem level at 35 (dumb and fraught with problems i know)
Ability to BUY your way up a gem to lvl 35.
Ability to salvage an augment and retain 50% of its value (if it was 70 it will be 35 when u salvage it)
Allow leveling chances to retain 100% up to the level grift you just completed. with a 25% decrease each level above it. (Completed a 70 grift. 75% chance to level gem to 71. 50% chance on 72 etc.) Or 50% each level above. so you can only possibly do one above.
I know these ideas are not fleshed out and don't take into account the big picture that Blizzard is "supposed" to take when making long term changes.
Here is what I propose, change the way that empowered GRifts work but still use them as a gold sink. You empower the rift and it lets you continue to upgrade the gem for a gold cost until you're done or out of gold. The gold cost will continue to increase as if you were empowering the GRift at the level of the gem. For example, you opt to empower a GRift 30 and you want to keep upgrading a lv 0 gem to that level.
You get the first 3 rolls for free like you normally do, but then lv 4 will cost 242,000g, then level 5 will cost 279,000g, etc. This goes on all the way until level 30 (7,400,000g per attempt) and failure rates stay the same. So if you hit 27 and fail, then you have to pay another 5,500,000g to roll again and hope you don't have to pay a third time. The gem will only upgrade to the level that you empowered.
I know that some people in the forum will say that this change would just encourage botting. Well, there isn't much in this game that discourages it, so adding this as a convenience won't hurt those who do play legitimately and want to power level. Without running 20+ Grifts to get a single gem up to par. I actually think it adds more value to items with gold find and BotH since people might actually farm for gold now to use it.
Keep in mind that any process that get's sped up brings the player closer to the point of not wanting to play. It's not that "blizzard doesn't want you to do it", it's "blizzard wants you to get a lot of replay out of a game you paid for". It's what their studio is all about. When you buy a blizzard game you know it's a game you're going to get a lot of hours out of. So just remember, any time you want the extra work taken out of something remember the complaints of people saying "Nobody is playing seasons. Two weeks in. All my friends are playing other games."
I still think the extra reward for the GR to gem level gap should be done though. You should not only be rewarded for time spent but be rewarded for capability. It applies to every player differently since not every player can farm the same GR level so you wind up with different results.
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I totally agree with Bagstone. Augments and Gem leveling are in a very good place.
Just fishing or trying to push high GRs by itself isnt that rewarding in the end (due to the speedy gearing process),
so its definetly nice with this additional purpose added to the endgame GR farming.
What should be fixed asap. When you have 60% chance to upgrade it should be 60%. Too many 1/4 0/4 streaks...
Season 6 barbarian solo sc EU grift 85 12m 23.199s MotE build
If people are complaining that there is no content to the game, then that is because the game is all about pushing Grs and that's pretty much it. Once a person has played thru campaign, neph rifts, and bounties a few hundred times that kind of content becomes old news and meaningless. All of that activity just points the player to one conclusion and that conclusion is that the game is all about pushing Grs. The game has no vision beyond that. If the game does it would be news to me.
Diablo 3 is Grs.
The only true solution to changing the breadth of the game is to make a new game that starts with a foundation with more compass than Gr pushing. I'm all for a new game, Diablo 4, but at the pace Blizzard creates new games it would be at the minimum 5 years out. The public waited for over a decade to go from D2 to D3.
If no new game is going to be released any time soon, then D3 itself has to be streamlined to make getting to GR content less annoying. Veteran players know what they want and making them jump thru hoops to get it is fine and dandy if it is actually FUN content. Problem is neph rifts are damn boring, bounties are damn boring, and veteran players not gaining more control over RNG is damn boring. If a veteran player could gain more control over the RNG then the build up tasks towards Gr pushing might be less annoying.
The game is supposed to be about fun. Hoops and busy work are not fun if a player never gains more advantage thru persistent play other than spending long amounts of time to get advantage. This is why botting becomes appealing to many. Players who put commitment should gain edges towards controlling RNG factors. Creating faster ways to raise gems is one way to reward dedicated players.
Why not make a new feature where you pick a gem you want to level. Instead of chance at a lvl, it gains exp just like paragon. Maybe even have a slider where you can dump every point of exp into it, half, or 10%. Maybe add breakpoints into the game where once you do something, or do it a certain amount of times, a particular gem gains 10 levels? Dunno.
I posted something to fix this at http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/20742384995#1
Essentially, move the Legendary Gems to Kanai's Kube. Caldessan's Despair is moved to Urshi. When you get to Urshi, you can upgrade your gems (Which are now account wide), or you can upgrade an ancient piece for 5 primary stat (Based on class, Vit upgrades removed), with the same chance of success/failure as gems.
The Gem of Ease recipe is moved to Gem of Ease lvl 25, which allows for the character equiping it to ignore all lvl requirements on gear.
I also posted my idea here, but it addresses only the problems of stash space and having to level another gem all over again when your characters share the same gems on builds. Please take a look and share your thoughts.
Now regarding the topic. I have the feeling that, when blizzard thought of Caldessann's, they wanted to target the ultra hardcore end game grinders, who were only farming paragons and getting bored. If they made it easier, it would lose it's meaning, no ?
"Do you guys not have phones?"
Its a really very slow and boring process and the +1 so called "augment" feels more like a slap in the face to keep us occupied.
If by any chance you play all the classes and you decide to augment all your items /sets with 80+gems you will grinding until the end of time.
Augments don't FEEL like something to keep us occupied, they ARE to keep us occupied.
People were complaining they couldn't upgrade their main gems anymore (after doing them 1% upgrades), and there was no use to upgrade the others. So... they gave the others a use.
And they did so in a smart way: everyone gets stronger, in a linear way (people that play a lot get higher augments, but they also had more paragon and better gear, so they increase their power with the same %), more "casual" players will use lower level gems as their "end" augment without the real need to upgrade as many gems as often, while the "hardcore players" will go through multiple sets and augment their items multiple times. This way, the balance between casual and hardcore players remains the same (it is a grinding game, someone playing 1 hour per day should not be as powerful as someone playing 12+ hours per day), and everyone will have to put relatively the same effort to keep that balance.
Also, people do not leave the game because they have to upgrade gems again after augmenting an item, since playing the game means upgrading them anyway. However, making it easier/faster to upgrade them, even if only a few levels, will make leave some people sooner, since "there is nothing left to do". So, changing the process would hurt the player base, not increase it.
Lastly, if it would get changed, it would need to be tweaked every season, because of the powercreep. I see suggestions now to speedlevel to 50 since we run 70-80 solo, so still a lot to upgrade. Well, on PTR, people are running 90+, so the speedlevel would have to be set to 60. Now what if there is a build after the patch that makes us jump a lot higher (I don't think last seasons static charge monk or this seasons twister wizard were planned, looking at how they get nerfed/destroyed in the next patch), do we change the number again mid season? Else people will complain again they need 50+ upgrades... And a core game mechanic (which this would be) that changes every season, is just bad. Imagine if they suddenly say "because of high paragon and augments, every point of mainstat only increases your damage by 0.5% instead of 1%", and the next season 0.4% because we have more again...
Nope.
Then people will ask for more chances, and when you least expect it, you'll have 70 chances to upgrade them with one GR
Removing the grift keys would be a very welcome change since i wouldn't mind doing those 60- to lvl gems
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